Tag Archives: History

Heavens, The Great Conjunction!

27 Dec 2020 By in Special days Tags: , , , , , 7 Comments

Our first view of the Christmas Star (Dec 19), © 2020 Susan Barsy

After a difficult year, the advent of the Christmas Star was something wondrous to look forward to.  The internet buzzed with how Saturn and Jupiter would align almost perfectly in their orbits, so much so as to appear as one unusually bright star.  This rare occurrence, coinciding with the winter solstice and technically known as “the Great Conjunction,” happens only once every four-hundred years.  The last time the Great Conjunction occurred in the night sky, however, was in 1226.  Earthlings primed to look up into the late December sky in 2020 stood to witness a cosmic and extraordinary rapprochement.  Bob and I (total amateurs when it comes to such things) talked over our astronomical excursion excitedly.

Seeing an astronomical wonder depends on information, good timing, and good luck.  Whereas some articles asserted that the planets would be visible for just forty-five minutes after sunset, from our present quarters in southwest Michigan, the two planets were above the horizon for almost two hours (per this sophisticated “time lapse” sky map for nearby Benton Harbor). The two planets had begun drawing closer to one another for many weeks prior to December 21 and will continue to appear close together in the night sky until early January.  The evening of the 21st was overcast in our area, but on the 20th and 22nd the conjoined planets (above) were easy to spot.

Pink halo above Jupiter (Dec 20), © 2020 Susan Barsy

On the 20th, as the sky grew dark, the two planets grew more distinct.  Jupiter sported a sweet pink halo; that was Saturn.  We found that our best view of the sky was from under some huge evergreen trees near a very powerful streetlight.  Gradually, we lost a clear view of the planets, as they descended at a roughly 45-degree angle toward the horizon.

The two planets (Jupiter and Saturn)

I took this photograph on the 22nd, using a Nikon with a 36x zoom.  This is a more clinical, scientific view.  The planets only appear to be “next” to one another, when they are hundreds of millions of miles away from one other and from us.  Saturn (at right) is roughly twice as far away from Earth as Jupiter is.

This picture from the 22nd, taken with my Sony on a tripod, better captures the thrill of seeing the two planets in the cold twilight sky.  Saturn is now clearly to the right of brilliant Jupiter.  Saturn looks like a pearl with an ermine ring.  Fiddling with this picture in Photoshop doesn’t improve anything.  The astonishing clarity of the planets filled me with awe.

The moons of Jupiter extend in a line to the left. New Buffalo, MI.

This was perhaps the best picture I took, because, to the left of the planets, one can just make out several of Jupiter’s moons.   The 22nd was partly cloudy, and we were lucky that the wispy clouds broke enough up to reveal this dazzling sight.  For a happy hour, we gazed up with our binoculars, our cameras, and our unaided eyes, until the planets disappeared into the trees.

All photos © Susan Barsy 2020

George & Martha Washington’s Christmas Pye

23 Dec 2015 By in Special days Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Virginia dining room from the Founding era (Thorne miniature)

In the Thorne Rooms of the Art Institute is a placard describing a special pie that George and Martha Washington are thought to have served on Christmas at Mount Vernon.

First make a good standing crust, let the wall and bottom be very thick; bone a turkey, a goose, a fowl, a partridge, and a pigeon. Season them all very well, take half an ounce of mace, half an ounce of nutmegs, a quarter of an ounce of cloves, and half an ounce of black pepper, all beat fine together, two large spoonfuls of salt, and then mix them together. Open the fowls all down the back, and bone them; first the pigeon, then the partridge, cover them; then the fowl, then the goose, and then the turkey, which must be large; season them all well first, and lay them in the crust, so as it will look only like a whole turkey; then have a hare ready cased, and wiped with a clean cloth. Cut it to pieces; that is joint it; season it and lay it as close as you can on one side; on the other side woodcocks, moor game, and what sort of wild fowl you can get. Season them well, and lay them close; put at least four pounds of butter into the pie, then lay on your lid, which must be a very thick one, and let it be well baked. It must have a very hot over, and will take at least four hours.

I puzzled to imagine the result of this outrageous recipe: a stew in a deep pot, swimming in butter?  Weren’t the Washingtons cooking up a food-borne disease?  The realities of their experience, though, turn out to have been far more pleasant and sophisticated; to an informed sensibility, the virtues of their Christmas Pie were considerable indeed.

Benjamin Latrobe, "Mount Vernon with the Washington family on the terrace" (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

In November 1786, Washington’s old friend and military aide, David Humphreys, wrote the retired general regretting that he would “not have the felicity of eating Christmas Pie at Mount Vernon.”  Afterward, Washington replied that he could have used Humphrey’s “aid in the Attack of Christmas Pyes . . . on which all the company . . . were hardly able to make an impression.”

Ivan Day’s research into food history illuminates what the Washingtons’ Christmas pie looked like and how the dish was actually consumed.  The recipe above, meant to be eaten cold, was for a standing Yorkshire pie well known throughout Georgian England.  According to an interview Day gave to The Hill, the crust served only as a standing vessel for the meats and was not meant to be eaten.  Instead, the crust and the thick seal of butter encased the meat, preserving it air-tight, not just for days but weeks.  The main ingredients, spiced and tightly packed inside one another, created concentric circles in the cooked pie when sliced.  When the pie was ready to be served, the top was broken off and guests feasted on the terrine-like concoction resting inside.  (For representative pictures, click here, here, or here.)

Raised pies (Illustration from Mrs Beeton's)

Victorian-era illustration featuring meat and game pies.

The Yorkshire pie was a towering work of gastronomy and ‘a universal favourite at Christmas time.’  Making such a pie demanded time, ample resources, and patience, but the result was a showy presentation of the choicest meat delicacies, baked in a fashion that sealed in their flavors.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the Yorkshire Christmas pie, which remained popular for at least a century, became a calling card of the powerful and wealthy.  The Washingtons’ recipe, from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (London: 1784), explains that

This crust will take a bushel of flour. . . . These pies are often sent to London in a box, as presents; therefore the walls of the crust must be well-built.

The Washingtons’ pie was not just massive and delicious, but a sign of their means and their ability to bestow largesse on other people.  Around the same time, the future English abolitionist William Wilberforce was arriving at a similar understanding.  Then a student at Cambridge, “he was truly hospitable,” for “there was always a great Yorkshire pie in his rooms, and all were welcome to it,” according to R. V. Taylor, in his Yorkshire Anecdotes, or, Remarkable incidents in the lives of celebrated Yorkshire men and women.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Maidens Speed-Skate, 1809

24 Nov 2015 By in Ice-skating Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

Women racing on ice skates in 1809.
‘At a women’s skating race in Leeuwarden [the Netherlands] in 1809, the crowd watched sixty-four unmarried women vie for a gold cap-brooch. The winner was Houkje Gerrits Bouma. For greater ease, many had thrown off their cloaks. Baur painted the finalists with bare arms, a jettisoned cloak on the ice. It left little to men’s imagination and caused an outcry; therefore it was the last women’s race for many years.’

 

Image: Nicolaas Baur (Dutch, 1767-1820)
‘Women’s Skating Competition on the Stadsgracht in Leeuwarden, 21 January 1809’
Rijks Museum via Wikimedia Commons

This is the ninth in an occasional series of posts on ice-skating.
Click here to go to the first post.

The Humanitarian Sensibility

10 Sep 2015 By in Humanitarianism Tags: , , , , , , , 4 Comments

woodcut of kneeling man in shackles
The humanitarian sensibility is the capacity to be moved by suffering we are not experiencing ourselves. It is especially remarkable when the suffering that moves us is remote, not present to our senses, but requires an imaginative empathic response.  The desire to relieve distant suffering or right abstract wrongs is an outgrowth of the humanitarian sensibility.  It is an active and extended form of charity.

The humanitarian sensibility is not innate–it is a product of culture, and not found in all societies, but where it is present it has profound consequences, both in the present and historically.  We can see it operating to various degrees in the Syrian refugee crisis, just as we can discern its utter absence in the perpetrators whose violence has led millions to flee Syria and its environs.  Historically, the humanitarian sensibility has powered innumerable movements, including the drive to abolish slavery in the Western world, beginning in the 18th and 19th centuries.

The humanitarian impulse, though not peculiar to the West, is a living expression of Biblical precepts and the natural rights tradition on which democratic government rests.  It carries the Biblical injunction to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ to its farthest possibility, leading Westerners to battle hunger and disease afflicting other continents, to give to Haitian disaster relief, to correct cleft palates and blindness wherever they are found, and to support female rights and rights activists like Malala Yousafzai.  The drive to minister to the world is noble, but it is not universally shared.  And in the US, we can see the limits of that sensibility, as when our government turned away children from Latin America, who came here seeking refuge from the violence and exploitation of the drug trade.

Image: from this source.
The emblem of the beseeching slave with the question “Am I Not a Man and a Brother?”
first gained circulation in the 1780s as the seal of the Society for the Abolition of Slavery in England.
The design was rendered in many forms,
on coins, in ceramic by Josiah Wedgwood, and as a woodcut, as here.
This powerful graphic appealed to viewers to look beyond differences of race and condition
to acknowledge the common humanity that linked free people with the enslaved.
This particular woodcut appeared on an American broadside to illustrate
John Greenleaf Whittier’s 1837 poem, ‘Our Countrymen in Chains.’

The Bicycle Begins

25 Aug 2015 By in Cycling Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

The balance bike, or draisine (photo by Gun Powder Ma via Wikimedia Commons)
The first bicycle had neither pedals nor a drive train; what made it a bike was the principle of balance, and the way it connected the human frame and locomotion to the efficient wheel.

The concept of the balance bike was magical if simple.  For the first time in recorded history, humans discovered that, with the right machinery, they no longer needed animals but could be a self-generating source of speed.  Until that moment, man’s conception of personal mobility consisted solely of walking or running.  For millennia, humans had had to depend on beasts—whether oxen, mules, or horses—to either carry them or power the conveyances that could transport them with speed.

The discovery that a human being could balance on a wheeled contraption and use his or her legs to push it was itself wildly revolutionary.  It was also a foundational discovery, crucial to developing the modern bicycle, the motorcycle, the automobile, and even (think Wright Brothers with their bike shop) the first airplane.  We owe the balance bicycle to a brilliant German inventor named Karl von Drais (1785-1851).  He was born in Karlsruhe, the capital of Baden, but as a young adult he moved to the smart city of Mannheim; he invented the first keyboard typewriter and hand-powered rail car, too.

Draisine-in-Mannheim-Garden-1819Curiously, Drais’s invention of the balance bicycle—which he dubbed a Laufmaschine, and which became known as a draisine or dandy horse—had its roots in an environmental crisis.  The bicycle was a consequence of the Summer without a Summer (1816).  The devastating eruption of the Indonesian Mount Tambora in April 1815 precipitated a long period of global cooling, depressing agricultural yields in northern Europe and the US and leading to widespread food shortages, livestock losses, and human suffering.  Von Drais’s thoughts turned to devising a new human conveyance because so many horses had died.  He called his foot-propelled vehicle a ‘running machine.’  This was in 1817.

Velocipedes in Luxembourg Garden (Paris), 1818Rooted in practicality, the draisine caught on because it was fun.  In no time, the rest of civilization had taken it up, smitten with a love of bikes and biking that continues on.

All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons:
Top: “Draisine or Laufmaschine Around 1820: Archetype of the Bicycle,” by Gun Powder Ma.
Middle: Von Drais Riding his Invention in Mannheim Garden, 1819.
Bottom: Velocipede Race in the Luxembourg Garden (Paris), 1818.